Roy Gluckman, expert facilitator and speaker

Leadership facilitator · Speaker

Senior people get unexpectedly emotional in my sessions, and the door opens to the conversation they needed, but didn't see coming.

I work with leadership teams on how they work better together. I build a space where the hard things can be said, and then worked through.

  • 14Years facilitating
  • 100+Organisations worked with
  • 5Continents worked across, from exco tables to the shop floor

The difference

Why leaders bring me in

01

Trained in the hardest rooms

Fourteen years in the most emotionally charged rooms in corporate life has taught me to build safety faster than people expect, and to bring in even the most sceptical.

02

I get past the professional version of people

In most sessions people say what is safe to say. Mine get to what they feel about the work and their relationships, unlocking the space for real conversation.

03

Everyone speaks, not only the confident

The loudest voice rarely says anything new. I make sure the quiet, the anxious and the sceptical are heard, because that is usually where the real issue is.

My services

The work I do

Stream 01

Leadership Team Facilitation

EXHALE is a team cohesion session for intact leadership teams: a half or full day of deliberate space to connect. Some teams come to reconnect. Some come to have honest conversations about how they work. Some come to find their footing together through change and uncertainty. It is not a strategy day. It is about connection, space and dialogue.

Who books this Exco and senior leadership teams, intact teams looking to improve how they perform together, and the HR and people directors who support them.

Teams needing to reconnect

New members joining, a hard year, or simply a long stretch since this team last properly talked. Space to reconnect as people, rebuild trust, and remember why you work well together.

  • Rebuilding trust after a demanding period
  • Reconnecting as people, not just colleagues
Half or full day · Enquire

Teams in change

Restructure, merger, new leadership, new strategy. The moment people start guarding position and guessing is exactly when a team most needs to be straight with each other.

  • What we can still trust in each other when the ground shifts
  • Connection as a way to feel steadier through change
Half or full day · Enquire

Teams leading change

For programme teams, or those landing a new operating model. A step back from delivery to look at the impact on people, and remember why the change matters.

  • The human impact of a new operating model
  • Reconnecting to the vision behind the change
Half or full day · Enquire

Teams in distress

Something has gone wrong. A fallout everyone is working around, trust lost after a bad decision, or a team that has stopped talking. The work is naming what happened and rebuilding enough to work together again.

  • Saying the thing nobody has said
  • Rebuilding trust after a breakdown
Half or full day · Enquire

Selected clients

NissanNedbankJoe PublicContinentalZutari
FormatHalf or full day, designed to your brief after one conversation
Group sizeBest under 25
DeliveryIn person
Enquire about this

Stream 02

Culture and DEIB

Keynotes and sessions on culture, psychological safety, inclusion and identity. For culture programmes, engagement series and observance months.

Who books this Heads of culture and DEI, internal communications, employee resource groups, and L&D and wellness teams, usually against a culture programme or an observance calendar.

Culture in a time of uncertainty

When uncertainty is constant, as it is today, people move into survival mode. This session looks at the cost to culture and team effectiveness, and at the two things needed to steady us.

  • Uncertainty as atmosphere, not event
  • How pressure turns colleagues into camps
  • Leading when you cannot promise certainty
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Psychological safety

To feel safe is to thrive. Why teams go silent, and how psychological safety builds trust, support and high performance.

  • What silence is telling you
  • Safety as performance, not comfort
  • Disagreement without damage
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Belonging

Belonging is a survival need, so we change ourselves to get it. When people have to tone themselves up or down to fit in, they are never at ease, and wellbeing and performance pay the price.

  • Fitting in versus belonging
  • What authenticity costs, and who pays it
  • Belonging as a leadership habit
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Unconscious bias

We tend to choose people who feel familiar and call it merit. How bias quietly undermines the objectivity of our decisions, and practical ways to interrupt it in the moment.

  • What bias is, and what it is not
  • Where bias enters a people decision
  • Interrupting bias in the moment
45 to 60 min · Enquire

LGBTIQA+

Three options, matched to where your organisation is: from the foundations and Pride basics through to supporting queer families and embedding belonging for LGBTIQA+ colleagues.

  • Terminology, clearly explained
  • Heteronormativity and “common sense”
  • Active allyship, not passive support
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Masculinity

Often run for International Men’s Day. How traditional masculinity impacts men’s wellbeing and leadership, and what men can do to build healthier relationships at work.

  • The impact of traditional masculinity at work
  • Authenticity and vulnerability for men
  • Men as active allies for gender equity
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Generational diversity

Gen Z is not the problem, but the gap between generations can be. What drives each one, where the tension really comes from, and how to turn it into an advantage.

  • What each generation actually wants
  • Inter-generational tension, decoded
  • Harnessing what younger colleagues bring
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Sexual harassment and bullying

Most harassment happens in the grey areas, exactly where our beliefs about acceptable conduct are least clear. We unpack them and introduce strategies for building safer workplaces.

  • Where the lines really sit
  • Power, silence and speaking up
  • Responding well when it happens
45 to 60 min · Enquire

Disability and neurodiversity

Most disabilities go undisclosed, because people do not feel safe enough to say. What makes disclosure safe, how reasonable accommodation really works, and the language we need to get it right.

  • Making disclosure safe
  • Inclusive language, with confidence
  • Neurodiversity at work
45 to 60 min · Enquire
FormatKeynote, awareness session, masterclass or longer programme
Session length45 to 60 min, or built into a series
AudienceAll staff, ERGs, people leaders
Enquire about this

Stream 03

Executive Education

Modules and guest sessions for business schools, universities and corporate academies. The work is building the leaders of the future: people who can hold diverse teams together through uncertainty. It is not a theory lecture. It is about self-awareness, identity and the practical skills that turn difference into performance.

Who books this Programme directors, faculty leads and executive education teams at business schools, universities and corporate academies.

Flagship module

Inclusive Leadership

Every leader now leads diverse teams: of background, generation, identity and opinion. Leading them well starts with how I see myself, my history and the beliefs I carry. Most leadership programmes skip this psychosocial aspect. This module starts there, then builds the skills to turn difference into performance.

  • Self-awareness: what I carry and how it shapes how I lead
  • Identity, value and how diverse teams show up
  • Tools and models to create psychological safety in their teams
Two days · Read more

Module

Leading Through Uncertainty

In uncertainty, psychological safety is the first thing to go, and the most expensive to lose. Leaders learn what psychological safety really is, how to spot when it is missing, and what silence costs in performance. Then the practical tools and models to rebuild it under pressure.

  • How uncertainty impacts how I lead
  • Reading the signs of an unsafe team
  • Practical tools and models to build safety under pressure
Two days · Read more

Selected clients

University of Stellenbosch Business SchoolEnterprises University of Pretoria
FormatTwo-day module, or shorter guest session
DeliveryIn person or virtual
AudienceMBA, EMBA and leadership development cohorts
Enquire about this
HPUnileverMercedes-BenzToyotaHeinekenAllianzBoschAmgenRed HatIndeedHogan LovellsHerbert Smith FreehillsCovingtonOgilvyNissanBridgestoneContinentalVodacomNedbankAbsaBarloworldZainZettleMcCain

Method

How I work

01

I feel what a room is carrying

I can feel the emotion, tension and potential in a group. Naming it gently unlocks the real conversation: unspoken needs, unquestioned habits, the stories we carry into work.

02

I work with a power informed lens

Most facilitation asks for openness without counting the risk. I work with a trauma informed view of identity, power and risk, so people move from performed vulnerability to real connection.

03

I make complex things simple

Cohesion, psychological safety, inclusion and vulnerability are crowded with jargon. I make them clear enough to use.

04

I hold space with nuance

My approach is a secured softness. No blame, no shame. Just a deeply human understanding that people are complicated, and that how we show up at work is shaped by far more than work.

Why it matters

What goes unsaid between people does not disappear. It leaks into execution and into the layers below. Surfacing it is the difference between a team that works and a team that works well.

Portrait of Roy Gluckman

About

The hardest rooms in corporate life.

I spent fourteen years in DEIB facilitation. Those rooms deal in identity, exclusion, shame and the fear of getting it wrong in front of colleagues. They are the most emotionally exposed spaces most organisations ever create, and running them well teaches you something that transfers everywhere.

What it taught me is how to feel into a space. To hear the words being said and, underneath them, the fears and hesitations shaping what does not get said. Often the group itself does not know those things are there. My work is to surface them gently, make them visible, and make it safe enough for the room to deal with them.

DEIB work also taught me something I did not expect. In rooms where people share who they are and where they come from, something shifts between them. Given a deliberate space to talk about our humanity, colleagues stop being roles to each other. The relationships go deeper, trust builds faster, and teams hold together in a way no process can produce on its own.

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Roy facilitating a small leadership group
Leadership group facilitation
Roy on stage at a large conference
Conference stage
Roy Gluckman

Tell me what the room needs to leave with.

Twenty minutes is usually enough to work out whether I'm the right person for it, and I will tell you if I am not.

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